Friday Five :: And trying to forget you is just a waste of time

Baby Come Back :: Player

Friday Five

5 Things this song reminds me of:

1. brown corduroy overalls with a hand-me-down striped shirt, I think it was Kristin’s, the girl who first told me what it was like to french kiss a boy. She had that magical “teen” at the end of her age, that aura of being older, of really knowing things.

2. Kristin’s parents were part of a group of friends of my Mother who would come over on Saturday nights, back when they were still married, and they would drink wine and play records. I knew all the songs by heart, and sang them quietly to myself when no one noticed.

3. Kristin would talk me into sneaking outside so she could spy at the twin boys who lived across the street. I thought they were awful, the same boys who refused me entry into the “no girls allowed tree house”, and threw baseballs at me when I was six, claiming to be “teaching me” how to play. I thought to myself that I would never want to french kiss either of them, but Kristin thought different, and whisper-sang baby come back to them as they got into one of their cars and drove off down our street.

4. The first boy I would french kiss would be years later, and it would awkward and sloppy and terrible. There was no wanting him to come back, and no “baby” in there, at all.

5. It would be the next kiss that would stick and stay, and inspire countless songs of longing, like this one, to make their way into mixed tapes and hand-scrawled lyric sheets in notebooks, and long-lost diary pages.